International

BUSINESS WIRE

July 14, 1987

SOUTH AFRICA`S mining and metals industries face strikes after more than a quarter-million blacks in the two industries voted in favor of industrial action. The National Union of Mineworkers, South Africa`s biggest labor union, said a ballot of about 200,000 miners showed 96 percent favored a nationwide strike that could paralyze many gold and coal mines. Labor analysts said the strike was likely to be delayed until next week to allow time for compromise offers from the Chamber of Mines, the representative body of the country`s powerful mining companies.

ELSEWHERE IN THE WORLD: Major European airlines, despite growing U.S. competition, have failed to devise a single computerized reservations system and instead will have two rival networks, an industry official said in Brussels, Belgium. One will be called Amadeus. The other will be Apollo, run by United Airlines. . . . Daimler-Benz Chairman Werner Breitsch-werdt said he would resign as chief executive of West Germany`s biggest industrial company for ``personal reasons.`` A firm date wasn`t disclosed. Speculation was that his successor will be Edzard Reuter, the vice chairman credited with Daimler- Benz`s moves into electronics and aerospace. . . . Coca-Cola Co. plans to return to the lucrative Persian Gulf market in earnest after 20 years on the Arab boycott list, industry sources said.

NATIONAL

INTEREST RATES ON SHORT-TERM Treasury securities fell in Monday`s auction. The Treasury Department sold $6.6 billion in three-month bills at an average discount rate of 5.55 percent, down from 5.62 percent last week. Another $6.6 billion was sold in six-month bills at an average discount rate of 5.54 percent, down from 5.68 percent last week. The new discount rates understate the actual return to investors: 5.72 percent for three-month bills with a $10,000 bill selling for $9,859.70, and 5.80 percent for six-month bills selling for $9,719.90. Separately, the Federal Reserve said the average yield for one-year Treasury bills, the most popular index for changing adjustable- rate home mortgages, fell to 6.61 percent last week from 6.71 percent the week before.

FORD MOTOR CO., riding a wave of record profits and sitting atop more than $8 billion worth of cash in its coffers, will be the target of a strike by the United Auto Workers union if negotiations for a new agreement break down, an industry report said. Three-year pacts with Ford and General Motors, though separate, expire at midnight Sept. 14. GM talks begin July 27, Ford on July 28. In Toronto, observers predict tough talks as the militant Canadian Auto Workers union today begins its first simultaneous talks with Ford, GM and Chrysler in five years. Canadian plants supply many U.S. auto plants. Separately, Ford said it plans to spend $250 million to expand its truck assembly plant in Louisville, Ky., so that more vehicles can be made there in the early 1990s. Ford also said it had reached a tentative agreement with the UAW at the Rouge steel plant in Dearborn, Mich. Length of the agreement was not disclosed.

MERGER AND ACQUISITION announcements dropped sharply in the first half of 1987 from a year earlier, but the dollar value of the deals rose 18 percent, Chicago-based consulting firm W.T. Grimm & Co. said. It said 927 mergers and acquisitions were announced in the first half of this year, compared with 1,527 in the year-earlier period. The value of the deals, where a purchase price was given, was $91.3 billion, compared with $77.1 billion a year earlier. A number of corporate takeover experts had been predicting a slowdown in mergers this year, due to factors such as a stock market rally that boosted the market value of many companies and the new tax law.